


Coated in Rust and Blood

by crazyparakiss



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Break Up, Grief/Mourning, H/D Hurt!Fest 2020, M/M, Mpreg, Post-Break Up, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Hatred, Therapy, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:55:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25247227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyparakiss/pseuds/crazyparakiss
Summary: No one escapes the nightmares. That’s what his headshrinker tells Harry every time he tries to unpack the baggage he was handed from infancy.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 32
Kudos: 130
Collections: H/D Hurt!Fest 2020





	Coated in Rust and Blood

**Author's Note:**

> The poems are two by Warsan Shire and do not belong to me. BUY ALL HER BOOKS SHE'S INCREDIBLY TALENTED!
> 
> The first is: Residue  
> The second is: Souvenir

> _i give myself five days to forget you_
> 
> _i. on the first day i rust._

Draco watches—face impassive—as Potter sets the brass key on Draco’s desk. A key that was more symbol than useful, one that served as a promise.

_A vow._

One Potter is breaking. 

There’s no apology. Nothing falls off of Potter’s tongue as he turns—walking out of Draco’s life the same way he walked in. Angry. Silent. Full of resentments Draco will never erase. 

Three years didn’t erase them, and he watches as three years walks out of his office door. Draco’s one salvation gone—the way Pansy always warned Potter would go. 

No one ever told Draco that being left behind is a pain none can prepare for, final like death but where the other person still exists. A rejection, unlike any other, Draco is numb yet breaking in Potter's absence. 

> _ii. on the second i wilt._

Sitting in the cold examination room at his private Healer’s office, Draco stares down at the grey and black scan she handed him moments before. It moves with the flicker of life. A heartbeat Draco swears he can hear within himself. One that shakes his core with the sorrow of what this child will be born into—a broken home. With parents who couldn’t manage to communicate. A wretched mother and a bitter father. 

Long fingers trace over the evidence of what Potter has left within him. Draco watches—mesmerised—as the little blob moves in and out of focus. Already an energetic thing that captures his heart. 

Even still, Draco releases a dry sob. Apologising to a being he doesn’t yet know. For sins he’s not yet committed, and for the sins he cannot take back. 

> _iii. on the third day i sit with friends but i think about your tongue._

Pansy stares at him with disappointment—an expression Draco knows well. 

“You’ll never be rid of him now, darling,” she murmurs. Setting her mimosa glass on the crisp white linen table cloth, Draco follows the movement but his mind is elsewhere. It’s with Potter, as always, remembering the way his mouth mapped Draco like a country he needed to learn. Possessing and claiming lands before others could—Potter’s tongue a siege that Draco surrendered to. So fully that now his infiltration remains within Draco’s body long after Potter leaves. 

“This won’t bring him back, Pansy.” Draco finally says when he can no longer distract himself within the few good memories. Ones that tended to lean more towards carnal than anything tangible. 

_All I had was his lust, never his love._

“Potter, like his weasel counterparts, has a strange obsession with holding on when it comes to family.” Pansy reminds him as she orders another drink—this one more liquor than juice. 

Draco wears a bemused grin when he reminds her, “As if we don’t hold fast to the bloodlines we are loyal to.” 

“Point,” Pansy sniffs. 

> _iv. i clean my room on the fourth day._
> 
> _i clean my body on the fourth day._
> 
> _i try to replace your scent on the fourth day._

Mother comes to oversee the design of the nursery. A room that once belonged to Potter—the place where he kept his work and sports equipment. Walls Draco has avoided until now. His mother removes the dust cloths from the sparse furniture that remains in Potter’s wake. 

Wrinkling her nose as a snow of dustmotes dance within the air around them. “You could’ve cleaned it at least,” she tells Draco with a clear reprimand. 

_Yes, I could have. I didn’t..._

Potter lingers in this room. A ghost Draco can smell. The spectre who whispers against every over-sensitive nerve that Draco possesses. Potter is an inescapable phantom and this room houses all that remains of him. 

No amount of cleansing will remove Potter from this space, but Draco is willing to let his mother try. 

_Free me._ He begs nothing and is rewarded with a lungful of Potter’s fresh, masculine scent when his mother pulls the cloth from Potter’s favourite chair. 

An illusion of magic that brings Potter back into this space—as if for a moment he never left. 

Draco falls to the floor with a sob escaping his mouth. His eyes too broken to cry tears—they ran dry in war. Despite his lack of tears, Draco knows he’s crying. Sobbing as he never has before, and if the tears were to run again he wonders if that would wash Potter out of his skin. 

Out of his heart. 

Out of his soul. 

_Damn you, Potter._ He thinks while his mother wraps him in her thin arms. _Damn me too._

> _v. the fifth day, i adorn myself like the mouth of an inmate._
> 
> _a wedding singer dressed in borrowed gold._
> 
> _the midas of cheap metal._
> 
> _tinsel in the middle of summer._
> 
> _crevice glitter, two days after the party._

Mother hosts her annual charity gala for the orphans of war. Draco, as her only child, is expected to attend. So he stands, in the swelter of summer, willing the sun down to give him reprieve in the hot garden. Even the cooling charms don’t chase away hot flashes, and Draco feels like a cheap toy as he is paraded around to all of the guests. 

“Mother, please,” he murmurs. Low enough that only she will hear. “I want to hide indoors.” 

“Nonsense, darling.” Mother says with a whisper for him while wearing her brightest hostess’s smile. Draco is swollen with the child he never asked for. The one who fills him still with Potter—a curse he will love and hold close while still wishing to escape. His grey gaze flits about the garden, searching for the devil who has yet to discover his crime. The one who rules the hell Draco gladly would fall within—just for another kiss. Another touch. Another affectionate lie. 

His eyes are desperate; searching for someone to fill the void Potter has left within him. A momentary escape from the reality of what this is. 

Theo gives Draco appreciative glances, and in a different life the thought of his hands on Draco’s body might not have filled him with revulsion. Hands other than Potter’s make his skin crawl. As if a demon already possesses Draco—one he will never exorcize from his being. 

Still, Draco wants to try. 

Through his disgust, Draco approaches Theo. With the intent of welcoming this man to a land that will never be his. 

> _i glow the way unwanted things do,_
> 
> _a neon sign that reads;_
> 
> _come, i still taste like someone else’s mouth._
> 
>   
>    
>    
>    
> 
> 
> _i. you brought the war with you_
> 
> _unknowingly, perhaps, on your skin_
> 
> _in hurried suitcases_
> 
> _in photographs_
> 
> _plumes of it in your hair_
> 
> _under your nails_
> 
> _maybe it was_
> 
> _in your blood._

  
  


No one escapes the nightmares. That’s what his headshrinker tells Harry every time he tries to unpack the baggage he was handed from infancy. 

Doesn’t work, he’s decided because the visions still boil within—as if they are embedded with roots his headshrinker cannot yank out. 

“How will you cultivate healthy relationships if you don’t sort this?” She asks him—hooking one leg over the other in a challenging display. One that causes Harry’s defences to rise. 

“Burying it all has worked thus far,” Harry replies with a terse, clipped tone. 

Her expression tells him she cannot help him if he’s not willing to be fixed, and Harry carries that rage home to the only person who accepts the hell Harry brings. 

Malfoy’s mouth devours all the sins Harry pours into it—lapping up his passion with relish. Welcoming Harry’s violent lusts as they put lovely bruises within his pale, peach soft skin. 

> _ii. you came sometimes with whole families,_
> 
> _sometimes with nothing, not even your shadow_
> 
> _landed on new soil as a thick accented apparition_
> 
> _stiff denim and desperate smile,_
> 
> _ready to fit in, work hard_
> 
> _forget the war_
> 
> _forget the blood._

Three years. That’s all Harry can manage with his fake bravado. 

Three years pretending he’s not coming apart at the seams. Unravelling like a frayed sock whose owner refuses to darn it—Harry’s collapsing in on himself. He wakes to Draco’s white back, and feels disgusted at his desires. The need to paint Draco’s skin crimson, as he had years ago in that lavatory. 

_I have to leave._ He thinks, terrified of his own mind. Of his own impulses. Of all the violence that lives in his fingers with the itch to be released. 

Ron’s warning about Draco whispers through Harry’s mind, “That’s a bad road, mate. Fucking an old enemy...you’ll never leave war.” 

How right Ron was then, and how desperately Harry had wanted his best friend to be wrong. 

> _iii. the war sits in the corners of your living room_
> 
> _laughs with you at your TV shows_
> 
> _fills the gaps in all your conversations_
> 
> _sighs in the pauses of telephone calls_
> 
> _gives you excuses to leave situations,_
> 
> _meetings, people, countries, love;_

  
  


Leaving physically is easy. Mentally is another story. 

Harry walks out of Draco's and his home, but as he moves through life the memories haunt him. A waking dream that crawls over his senses with the reminders of Draco’s kisses. His laughter. His long, pale toes that curled with pleasure when Harry entered his willing body—hitting that _perfect_ angle. 

Draco is everywhere in the space between Harry’s thoughts. A leaden cloak of guilt that drags behind Harry wherever he goes. Whispering reminders of how good it once was. 

Malfoy was fractured like him, but still became a shining beacon of hope. A crutch—that’s how Hermione described the dependency. 

Hastily she cautions Harry when she sees him staring off into the distance—as if she can tell where his mind wanders. Where it lingers on the dips in Draco’s sharp hips. A place he loved to leave the brand of his teeth. 

“You’re better off without him,” Hermione tells him during their most recent interaction. 

Harry never tells her that it’s Draco who is better off without him. 

>   
>  _iv. the war lies between you and your partner in the bed_
> 
> _stands behind you at the bathroom sink_
> 
> _even the dentist jumped back from the wormhole_
> 
> _of your mouth._
> 
> _you suspect it was probably the war he saw,_
> 
> _so much blood._
> 
>   
>    
> 

“What do you want?” Ms Linde, his headshrinker, asks when their session is spent in silence. Harry hasn’t said a word—his gaze lingering on the clock that ticks steadily on her office wall. 

What does he want? 

_Peace._

An easy yet difficult answer. 

Peace was supposed to come when he won a war. Instead, Harry spent his early twenties trapped in silence while the papers lied and told people he was off doing humanitarian work for the world. No one wants a hero who is drugged into stillness because they cannot escape their own demons. 

People can’t handle the things that break Harry, they don’t want him fragile and lacking. They want him as he was when he stood in that hall and vanquished their darkest tormentor. They want a god and what they have is a fractured human. 

He must relay all of this to Ms Linde, for she watches him with pity. Her voice cracking when she tells Harry, “You’re still worthy, Mr Potter.” 

“I should’ve died in that forest. What will I give the world beyond Voldemort?” 

She doesn’t flinch the way others still do, and that’s the only trait that has kept Harry from leaving her too. Her obvious strength and her unwillingness to be cowed by his uncooperative nature. “What can you give yourself, Harry? It’s not about the world anymore?” She leans forward, after setting her pad aside. “What do you want?” 

“Once upon a time I thought I wanted a family.” Something he hasn’t thought about in ten years. 

“What does family look like to you?” 

Draco’s image filters through his mind, immediately after her question. Harry, Draco, a beach, and a baby. 

It’s as humorous as it is heartbreaking. 

> _v. you know peace like someone who has survived_
> 
> _a long war,_
> 
> _take it one day at a time because everything_
> 
> _has the scent of a possible war;_
> 
> _you know how easily a war can start_
> 
> _one moment quiet, next blood._

Ron finds him collapsed in an alley behind some new pub on Diagon. 

“You’re lucky they called me instead of hauling you in for assault.” Ron squats beside him, peering into his face with concern. “What happened, Harry?” 

The evening had been fine. Fun even. Until some snot thought they could impress him by talking about Draco. Whispering vile lies about Draco being a whore—putting himself arse up for freedom. Harry remembers the months of horrible speculation at the beginning of their relationship. When that bitch Rita had all the _Witch Weekly_ readers up in a fuss by convincing them of Draco’s intentions to use Harry. 

It was nothing like that...if anything, Harry used Draco. As he fell apart Draco would hold him—he’d open his arms and accept all the darkness Harry had to give. 

His nails in the ground of Harry’s garden, with dirt packed beneath them, as he clawed and screamed while he told Harry to take what he needed. 

_Give me the violence, Potter. Let me hold it for you._

No one is allowed to paint Draco as a vile thing in Harry’s presence. 

Ron sighs, “Why don’t you go see him?” 

“He deserves more than I can give.” 

Ron snorts, “I’ve met the wanker, and I’m inclined to disagree.” 

> _vi. war colours your voice, warms it even._
> 
> _No inclination as to whether you were_
> 
> _the killer or the mourner._
> 
> _no one asks._
> 
> _perhaps you were both._

Narcissa’s party is a bore as usual, but Harry moves through the gathered guests with intention. He could give a shit about charity. He’s been charitable enough for one lifetime. Harry’s goal is to find Draco. 

He spots him easily—Harry could find Draco in infinite darkness if all of his senses were stolen. There’s something about Draco that has always pulled Harry in. 

Draco is perched beneath a tree, glistening from the warmth of summer. One beautiful hand over a swell that Harry would be blind to miss. 

Grey eyes lift and their gazes lock, neither says anything but Harry knows this is the beginning. He’s already rooted in Draco, and the devil knows Draco is in him. 

_you haven’t kissed anyone for a while now._

_to you, everything tastes like blood._

**Author's Note:**

> Remember to leave some love for the creator if you can! Come reblog this work and view others from this fest [HERE](https://hd-hurtfest.tumblr.com/) on the H/D Hurt!Fest tumblr page!


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